It all started with a seminar of the Future For Nature Academy (FFNA), an initiative of young conservationists to connect and inspire other young conservationists by various organising activities. That particular evening in January turned out to have a big impact on my life. The speaker of the day was Antoinette van de Water, who had 12 years ago radically changed her life to dedicate it to the conservation of elephant and founded the organisation Bring The Elephant Home (BTEH). After literally saving some elephants from the streets, she worked on various community-based research projects in order to stimulate some fundamental changes for Asian elephants. After an inspiring talk, she mentioned she was now moving to South Africa to study the elephants there. Furthermore, she casually asked the audience if we thought people would be interested in joining her projects as students or volunteers.
With my nature of being overly enthusiastic about a wide range of nature- and animal-related topics, combined with a deep love for South Africa after I spent six months there in 2014, I thought that - of course! – people would be interested to join such projects. Although I didn’t really plan on it that evening in January, it now turns out that I am indeed the first volunteer of BTEH in Africa! All of this wouldn’t have happened if the FFNA hadn’t organised that evening, I hadn’t cancelled my training that night, and I hadn’t walked up to Antoinette after the seminar. But it did happen. And who knows how my life will be influenced by this in the future?
That evening I actually only talked to Antoinette about writing a literature review for her as the final part of my master. Her enthusiasm on my proposal made me extra excited! Not long after, we had discussed the rough outline of my review, and I couldn’t help but suggest to join BTEH for a while in Africa. To my surprise she was also enthusiastic about that! To be realistic though, I first had to write my review on the human-elephant conflict in South Africa to graduate, train a lot, and play a world championship in underwater hockey, besides some other projects and part-time jobs. Now, all of that is finished. In the meantime Antoinette and I kept discussing some possibilities to join their work in South Africa. As she was busy with settling in and setting up her own PhD she wasn’t sure what she would be able to offer me, and suggested I contacted the research organisation Elephants Alive too. Luckily, Elephants Alive was happy to have me too, and we decided that I could spend some time working with both Elephants Alive and BTEH. Both parties have various amazing projects for me to join, and I am super excited to gain all this work experience right here in the South African nature.
I loved my days in the office of BTEH in Dinokeng Game Reserve. It is an amazing place to work: birds flying around in the office garden, and surrounded by thousands of animals on the savanna. We have done many game-drives after work and got to see many animals, and I even got to see my first elephants! As you can read in my next blog, I have already arrived at Elephants Alive, where new adventures await. I’m sure these three months in Africa will be full of exciting projects, amazing nature, and lovely people. It’s hard to imagine that I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I hadn’t been to that seminar in January. I guess it’s time to end this story with the cheesy advice that you should really, really, try to grab those opportunities that make you excited about life. Because although you will get disappointed at times, it might as well offer you amazing experiences!